Another Tequila Sunrise!

I played bartender at my dear friend Jackie's birthday bash yesterday! It was great fun, of course. We had a special cocktail in her honor which was pretty popular, I have to say.

It must have reminded us all of our dreams of lying around on a beach somewhere warm and tropical, sipping . . .

A special cocktail for Jackie's birthday celebration!

Another Tequila Sunrise (please!)

Combine as much tequila as you think you can handle with orange juice over ice. Drizzle with a little grenadine if you have it. If not, don't sweat it – just drink it and enjoy!!

  

 

Catching up on promises

Hey, I promised to tell you how the bartending class went (see Imagine ME as your Christmas present!) It was SO much fun! First of all, Jess and Brian have a sweet house on a winding street up a hill overlooking all of San Francisco, so you can imagine the setting was to die for. We organized the bar in the kitchen, which had a clear view out the living room window to beauty, and went to work.

There were eleven vodka cocktails on the class outline, and we motored through all of them. I made them, explaining each one and talking about variations. Then we passed the drink around to everyone who was drinking (all except Wayne, who has a bad reaction to alcohol, and Jess, who's pregnant!). There was a lot of sippin' goin' on, believe me, plus a few people with their own straws doin' a little more than sippin'. You know who you are! Meanwhile there were snacks - artichokes and dip, veggies, crackers - to keep us upright.

Finally, after all eleven drinks had been constructed and sampled, everyone decided what their favorite drink was and Brian and I made that for them to have with Lee's wonderful salmon dinner.

What do you think the drink with the most  "favorites" was? I was pretty blown away that it was the Bloody Mary. I mean, it wasn't even morning! Nevertheless, several people wanted their very own.

Brian, the giftee, opted for the Vodka Collins, which I'll admit was good and refreshing. Lee, the giftor, went for the Cosmo. These drinks are already on this blog (look to the right under The Best Cocktails)...well, the Vodka Collins is there under Tom Collins, which is gin. Just substitute vodka, of course, if that's your preference.

A good time was had by all, especially by ME! I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

No, silly, that's not us in the photo!! We looked similar though. You know, happy.

When life gets busy. . .

LIFE has really been fun the past couple of weeks. And busy.

First my son Arthur and his family came to visit from Portland, Oregon. They were interviewing schools in Petaluma to see whether they might want to move back to northern California. YAY! I'm in favor of that! They'd be so much closer!

One day Jack, who is 10, stayed with us rather than traipsing around to schools with his mom and dad. We went to the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda, just a few minutes from here. Totally cool - you pay $15 for adults and $7.50 for kids and get to play as much as you want on 85-or-so antique and modern pinball machines for free!

We had a great time while they were here and, too soon, they were gone back home.

Then I got scheduled to work quite a bit slingin' drinks at the Claremont Resort. I love to work, of course :-), but it's a little unusual for February. Usually, once the holidays are over it's pretty slow for awhile. Yes(!) to money though.

This last week it was Wayne's birthday plus Valentine's Day. Wayne's daughter, The Beautiful Marja, came up from L.A. for a week to help celebrate, and her mom Mary came over from Santa Cruz for a few days too. Marja and Mary are my thrifting buddies, so we went back to the White Elephant Sale (see previous post), this time to donate and shop. This time it was so much better because, while we certainly weren't alone, there were lots fewer people there and even more WE's (White Elephants) than before. We found many bargains. Best of all, I got to clean out a whole bunch of "great stuff" from my home. I didn't want it or need it, but someone else might love it! My house feels good!

Then, Marja and I decided to paint my bathroom. Oh God, once you start it's endless. We scraped the ceiling (yuk), and the cabinets (Mary helped with this), and bought gorgeous new knobs for the drawers, and painted and painted and painted some more. Now it's beautiful and pink and new looking, but what a lot of work. So worth it, though.

As of today, everyone's gone and it's very quiet. Wayne and I are amusing ourselves by putting up towel racks and pretty shelves (see the fancy wooden supports on my Thrifting post), and soon I'll be hanging artwork back up on the walls. The bathroom will be finished. I love it.

Tomorrow we'll join our friend Rina and our friends George and Maureen at their daughter Julia's benefit party for the launch of her new company Blackbird Underpinnings. It's vintage-inspired intimate apparel and loungewear...how fun is that? And the party's at Bar 355 in Oakland, a new place to experience!

LIFE keeps on being fun! And busy.

White Elephant Hunt

My thrifting buddy Mary and I, plus my boyfriend Wayne, went to the Preview Sale of the Oakland Museum's huge White Elephant Sale a week or so ago. Last year we had gone to the actual sale, a free 2-day event held in a huge warehouse off Fruitvale Ave. here in Oakland. There was so much great stuff at such fabulous prices (I bought a beautiful wicker table for my guest room - $25!) that we resolved to go again this year. True - it was packed with hundreds of people and the line to get in was massive - the only serious drawback.

This year we decided to go to the Preview Sale and pay the advance charge of $15 each because we'd get to see everything first. Surely there would be fewer people since everyone had to pay. Not a chance! When we drove up, comfortably on-time for the opening at 10 a.m., it was obvious our optimism was unfounded. The line stretched from the warehouse door, 4 or 5 shoppers deep, down two city blocks, around a corner, down four more city blocks and out onto Fruitvale Ave, the main road going into the area. Someone said it had been like that since 6 a.m. Yikes.

We let Mary off at the door, since she has some trouble walking long distances, and went to park the car. Just up the street, neighbors had opened a little lot for $10 parking fee (which benefited local artists), so we did that and went to get in the Incredible Line, which had diminished somewhat since they had opened the doors. Soon we were all inside, separated and each of us looking for treasure.

Man, it was a crowd of people, and now there was an air of urgency about the shopping that we hadn't felt last year. Probably it was because the professionals came to the Preview Sale to get the really good stuff first - just like us, except we're not professionals. Long story short, we lasted an hour and didn't buy much because each purchase involved 45 minutes in line to pay for it. And there were just too many people.

Lesson learned: Go to the regular sale March 2nd and 3rd, which is free and not so hectic. Besides the weather is warmer and the warehouse isn't freezing cold! Enjoy ourselves and still find good stuff.

Second lesson learned, because we got new information from a savvy woman in the entrance line: Donate to the sale. People who donate at least $50 worth of goods on certain days of the week get a free Donors Pass to shop that day between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. We're going next week to both donate and shop. I've had a very productive couple of weeks cleaning out bookcases and closets with good stuff to donate. Yay!! Thank you, Savvy Woman!!

Special Bonus: The good neighbors where we parked our car (we'd do that again, it was so convenient) turned us on to a very cool local coffee shop, Kefa Coffee just up the street on 29th Avenue, where we satisfied our after-sale hunger with delicious fresh-made ham-and-egg sandwiches and even more delicious Ethiopian coffee. Hunting white elephants had left us famished!

Writing your own life into story

Book cover from Amazon.com

Today I did something I should do much more often - I took a class. It was called Writing Your Life Into Story given by Barbara Abercrombie, a writing teacher at UCLA who has written and published a gazillion books. Well, quite a few anyway; I think fourteen. She has written a new book called A Year of Writing Dangerously, and I bought it, of course. That was the price of the workshop.

It was well worth the time (3 hours) and the price ($16.95) and the effort (a drive from Oakland across the San Rafael Bridge to Corte Madera on a gorgeous sunny morning with the Bay all sparkling and blue). I've been writing pieces of my life for several years, partly for therapy and partly so the things I remember don't disappear with me, so I was especially interested in the subject. At the same time, Barbara reminded me of the joy of writing, and how it doesn't need to be a tiresome over-wrought thing. One of her mantras is: Just get out of your own way and write. Amen.

The class was held at Book Passages in Corte Madera, in Marin County. What a gorgeous bookstore! What a pleasure to be there! Of course I wanted to buy all the books, but I'm on a bit of an austerity tear at the moment, what with income and property taxes coming up, plus a bit of expensive dental surgery. Nevertheless, I feasted my eyes and perked my brain, and now I have Barbara's book to enjoy.

Barbara Abercrombie's blog site is: http://writingtime.typepad.com/.  I expect to come across more pearls of wisdom there too. She was just delightful.

Planting a winter garden

 

All it took was a few days of sunshine and mild temperatures, and I was down at the neighborhood Ace nursery buying up baby vegetables. We're so lucky in northern California - many vegetables grow through the winter, including this year a crazy cherry tomato that's still going strong in late January (this has never happened in my garden before!).

 

 

If you look closely you will see yellow flowers even, signalling yet more tomatoes to come. Amazing! Well, that's unusual.

 

The vegetables that usually grow well in our climate in winter are of the cabbage family -cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli - as well as beets and lettuces, and other leafy things like kale and chard. All are yummy!

 

I bought beets and arugula for the back yard, which doesn't get much winter sun but is also protected from the most "extreme" cold by the house.

 

Just a comment about "extreme" cold: I'm originally from Minnesota and we don't have anything here in coastal California that even approaches Extreme Cold, so you're probably laughing if you happen to be in a climate where REAL cold happens. Believe me, I haven't forgotten.

 

Here are the sweet new little beets and arugula:

 

 














And Nero (a.k.a. Pookie-Boo) guarding an already maturing cabbage:

 

 For the front yard, where the best sun is, I got rainbow chard, cauliflowers, and broccolini, which I planted in pots...easier to water if we don't get rain, and easier to defend from hungry spring snails.

 

Baby rainbow chard

Broccolini all gathered in a pot

Snowball cauliflower YUM!

Aren't they sweet? And, mmm, are they ever going to be good to eat! I think that rhymes. Sort of.

 

The temperature has dipped back into the low 50s today, and the sky is overcast with drops of rain spitting here and there, so it looks like our few days of warmth are over for now. Every time I look at my new little vegetables, though, bravely standing up in their pretty pots, I know Spring is coming. Yay!!

 

 

The Dart Board Bib

Once in awhile you have to do something solely for your honey. My boyfriend Wayne likes to play darts. Let's change that - he LOVES to play darts. So, we looked for a good place in our home or yard to mount a dart board.

We live on a hill. Normally it's a good thing (floods, views, all that). But it's not great for darts. There's nowhere outside where there's a long enough piece of level ground to mount a dart board. So we looked inside, and we found the perfect place: the back of the door in a little hallway between the living room and the kitchen. Here's the dart board installed on the door:

And here's The Problem: As you can see, the door is made of wonderful beautiful hardwood, like all the doors in our craftsman home. So, if a darts player misses, God forbid, the dart goes into the door. This is not a problem for Wayne, who is the quality of darts player who does not miss the target. But for me? Not so much. Before we realized the extent of The Problem, I had already sunk several darts into our gorgeous door. Drat.

Obviously something had to be done. I envisioned a bib, like the kind you'd put on a baby to ward off all the food and dribble that naturally flows toward his chest. And I figured I could just hang the bib on the dart board like you'd hang a bib on a baby's neck, and it would stay put if it was stiff enough.

First I looked through my stash of fabrics to find something stiff and tough enough to repel a sharp dart. Last year I made tree skirts for Christmas gifts, and I had some leftover canvas and cotton batting. They could be used, although they were both light colored and wouldn't look so great on the door. I could use the canvas on the back of the bib.Then I found a piece of heavy dark blue denim and decided that would be unobtrusive enough for the front, and masculine enough for Wayne.

I made a pattern by taping a big piece of paper to the door over the dart board and tracing out the circle where the board was. Here's the pattern as I used it to cut out a double layer of the cotton batting stuffing for the bib:

Then I used the pattern and fabric folded in half to cut out the front and back of the bib, putting the fold of the pattern on the fold of fabric. I added 1/2 inch to all edges including the inner circle when I cut these two pieces, to allow for seams.

Using the sewing machine, I sewed a 1/2 inch hem all the way around the outside and around the inner circle of the canvas backing. Then I laid the batting on the inside surface of the back, matching all the edges, and layered the denim front over it all, pinning the denim in a 1/2 inch overlay to enclose the edge of the batting all the way around all the edges, including the inner circle. I sewed all the edges together with a 1/4 inch topstitch, dark blue thread on the top and white thread on the bobbin. It worked great, and here's the result:

Yay! It's a dart board bib, and even if you purposely miss the dart board, the dart doesn't go into the wood of the door. Instead it drops to the floor and sticks in the hardwood floor. Drat. Wayne loves it though, and that's what matters.